The deadline for receiving the first and largest financial incentive from the federal government is fast approaching. In fact, all providers in every specialty must be fully utilizing an EHR by October 1, 2012 to qualify.

Has your practice decided on an EHR vendor yet? Are you slated to go-live on your system already? With almost 70% of private practicing physicians waiting until the last minute, EHR vendors are facing unprecedented requests for implementing these robust software solutions in an effort to help practices meet this 2012 deadline. There simply isn’t the capacity among EHR vendors to meet this demand. Invariably, many practices will miss the deadline due simply to volume.

What does this mean to you? If your practice has not evaluated and finalized a purchase decision by the end of April 2012 you may be “April’s Fool” – finding yourself at the back of the line of late purchasers that is too long to meet your timeline. You will have thrown $18,000 per physician out the window with no possibility of recovery.

Since time is short and the learning curve for properly evaluating these complex software systems is long, how can you confidently make a purchase decision quickly? Consider the following as a crash course in how to differentiate between a seemingly good software system and one that will actually meet and exceed your expectation in orthopaedics.

Two approaches: Design Holism or “Facelift Engineering “

The greatest secret in the EHR industry is
that virtually all systems are functionally IDENTICAL to the other—this is also true with “orthopaedic-specific” vendors. Aside from minor cosmetic “specialization” touches, there is virtually no discernible difference between Vendor X and a system built for Primary Care. This is what we call “Facelift Engineering” – in other words, most vendors simply make changes that cause the system to lookfunctionally orthopaedic (i.e. adding “meniscus” or “ACL” to a system pick list), yet the system will not run efficiently because the underlying issues or orthopaedics have not been solved.

Evaluating the topic even more deeply, and certainly more integral to the workflow issues in orthopaedics, is digital imaging. EHR is simply NOT orthopaedic-specific if it does not properly address imaging within the flow of the system. Ordering, viewing and interpreting digital images occurs in as many as 60% of orthopaedics office visits and may require the coordination of up to 5 staff members. Aside from patient check-in, managing x-ray imaging is the largest bottleneck in orthopaedics.

At Phoenix Ortho we dedicated ourselves to Design Holism which is the simple recognition that solutions to workflow issues must necessarily be interconnected within core system design to truly be efficient. From our inception we sought to make the practice of orthopaedic medicine more efficient and therefore more profitable.

Fusion of Leading-Edge Software and Hardware

Design Holism extends beyond software engineering to include evaluation and maximization of usability across various hardware devices.

PhoenixOrtho has been engineered to maximize the potential of all cutting-edge hardware devices including workstation PCs, Tablet PCs and Apple’s iPad. In fact, Phoenix Ortho is the only orthopaedic EHR software designed in Apple’s proprietary IPad/iOS ensuring ease-of-use and simplicity of design inherit in all Apple App Store applications.

With Phoenix Ortho you truly have the ultimate fusion of technology and design developed exclusively to solve the issues you face in orthopaedic medicine.

Workflow Bottlenecks: The Key to Orthopaedic EHR Success

Orthopaedic medicine is unique. While this comes as no surprise to you, no other EMR company has completely understood this statement – we have.

By carefully evaluating the workflow of orthopaedic medical practices across the nation based on decades of experience implementing EHR systems across all specialties, PhoenixOrtho program engineers isolated and solved the unique workflow needs specific to orthopaedic medicine.

While speed is the primary concern for most evaluating physicians, discovering how to maximize speed in orthopaedics has been elusive until Phoenix Ortho. By isolating and evaluating workflow bottlenecks with existing EHR users, we were able to establish fundamental causes and design solutions.

Most importantly, we discovered that the standard tools offered by every other EMR company were simply inadequate to the task of solving these problems. Therefore we set out to design truly unique software tools and workflows to address these fundamental problems. This was the missing piece to orthopaedic EHR success

Don’t be “April’s Fool”. Schedule an appointment with Phoenix Ortho without delay. You can begin and end your search with a single phone call partnering with the nation’s leader in Orthopaedic EHR. By combining EHR with PACS (digital x-ray imaging) and by leveraging our system across virtually all hardware platform (including iPad), Phoenix Ortho is the only comprehensive medical records solution available meeting all of your clinical needs.

Time is of the essence. While there are hundreds of software vendors who can sell you software, only Phoenix Ortho is focused on orthopaedics with the expertise to ensure your success. You’re a specialist – you should partner with a specialist; contact Phoenix Ortho today.